A funny thing happened on Tuesday this week. It began not so funny, when dad called me over in the morning by the pond, pointing out the remains of our baby red lobster. The head was detached and flesh was gone. Dad said, “no wonder last night I could only spot three lobsters. One was dead.” We had introduced four baby red lobsters to the pond three weeks ago.
The thought that the baby lobster was killed by its friends was saddening. It was gruesome and brutal. I imagined that a claw pulled its head out, or that its head was caught under a rocky edge and got ripped off. I told my mum before leaving the house for yoga, “that’s so sad.. to be killed by your friends, isn’t it?” Mum chuckled a little.
Coming home rather late that night, I looked into the pool and there was the shell remains in the pond. We had decided to leave it in the pond through the day as one of the remaining red lobsters had turned black and was hanging around the shell a lot. We thought it was mourning its friend’s death, so we leave it be. But the day was ending and I scooped out the remains out, into the trash bin it went.
Now I returned to the pond and just sat, and stared. We don’t usually move the rocks in their home about much, because they have marked territories and we do not want to interfere. But just to make sure the remaining three lobsters are not traumatised, I began shifting rocks around to have a look.
Lifting the biggest rock that was the ceiling for their caves, slowly out crawled four lobsters crawled. Four.
FOUR? What?
I made a ruckus shouting for my mum. She hurried over to peer into the pond, in disbelief. Four baby lobsters crawling out of their own caves. This is one of those moments in your sleep your logical voice will echo “nonsense. You’re in a dream.”
Who died, then?
We dug into the trash bin, picked up the lobster remains and examined it. The entire claws and tiny feet were attached neatly to the hard body shell. There was a tiny cut in the claw joint, that’s all.
Then wisdom finds us, finally. Molting! The lobster has shed its shell and grew! Silly silly us. Mum googled a video and there in a tank, a blue baby lobster losing its shell. It has that tiny cut in the claw joint too. Oh.. that black mourning lobster could just be the owner of the remains!
The entire day a gray cloud floated over my head as I kept having visions of the baby lobster’s tragic death. Instead of death, it was growing into life! I recalled then, the theme of discomfort shared by yoga teacher Emily Kuser in a class I attended last November in Ubud, Bali. She shared Rabbi Dr. Twerski’s wisdom.
Here it is—a gift for you for reading this far:
SHENAYOGA 